


Challenge Snippets

by Anna S (eliade)



Category: The Sentinel, The X-Files
Genre: Challenge Response, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 05:19:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliade/pseuds/Anna%20S
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snippets written in 2000 for different challenges</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Challenge Snippet One

Challenge: Jim & Blair, ten years later, 200 words   
Where: Senad   
When: summer 2000

 

* * *

I sit and watch him a while from a bench. He sits unaware, window framed in the cafe. Coffee at one hand. Sections of newspapers scattered around the table. Bad posture but comfortable, legs stretched, sneakered feet entangled with another chair. I bought him that sweater. Cable-knit is what _you_ like, he said. But still pleased.

This small delay in rejoining him makes rejoining him better. I could be watching the lake, ducks, joggers, but I watch his fingers move. All his movements. No focus. I let the distance exist, and he’s smaller and vaguer from a block away. Spied on, he’s almost like someone else. Same but different. When I’m not there, he’s ordinary. Thinking of his classes maybe, his students.

Just some guy I live with. I could believe that from here. We both seem smaller, established, when I sit and feel the neighborhood around me. Everything I’ve grown used to. The city feels smaller. Everything I know is well known.

I get up and walk down the hill.

"There you are," he says when I walk in. Looks up, eyebrows raised. The perch of glasses on his nose can be annoying. The thing I most love.


	2. Challenge Snippet Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Challenge: Crossover with Krycek (XF), 500 words  
> Where: Some list.  
> When: fall, 2000

3:30 A.M.

I compose a mental postcard.

Dear Blair. Living sucks. Even after death there will be travel.

Plane delay, fat man snoring. Rain and babies. Usual cripple stuff.  
Sudden glances. Mundane shit, literal shit in a tiny toilet,  
one-handed. Me, gunless, alert for familiar stances, averted eyes,  
casual newspaper readers with hidden badges, aliens.

Suspended in night. Black oil. Airplanes give me bad dreams.

Home soon.

6:00 A.M.

His face its usual bowl of curls and knobs. Voice like caramel. "Hey,"  
he says. One word, rich dollop. I think of pancakes. Hunger is a  
familiar small wolf in my pocket. He wears his flannel, those  
earrings, that embarrassment of hair. No gun, just truck keys at  
ready. I nod, flirt my eyes to his, we go. He shepherds me with small  
chat, friendly body, very human. Aliens are nothing like this, even  
when they try.

8:00 A.M.

Lying across me, he dozes and breathes, small rasps of a fading  
headcold. His head covers my heart. Anyone would shoot through him to  
reach me. Rain is falling, but a better rain, here. From inside, where  
I reside in a long winter, I look out at the top of his head and think  
of how he trusts me, what an odd choice he has made. I am unsuited to  
him, but he wears me down and breaks me in as if I am worth the  
effort. I’m older than I look in the mirror. Older eyes, up to the  
brim with secrets, eyes no longer entirely my own. Grim and quiet on  
subjects he rarely questions; dry and facile on what subjects we can  
share.

He doesn’t realize his temperament. Thinks he’s patient, when he’s  
pushy. Now and then I think of Mulder. Every two men have likenesses,  
if you study them long enough.

10:00 A.M.

He is out plucking weeds. I pluck the curtains and sip the coffee he  
made. I scan the trees by habit. Nothing worries me. Or nothingness.  
The nothing that is there worries me.

I turn away by an act of will, facing inward on what we call the  
study, a heaped mess of our habits and reading and work. Syllabi on  
his iMac, Free Cell on my PC. Game 31,058. Move ten cards in a certain  
pattern and open sesame. Like many a small businessman with an eye to  
practicalities, I’ve learned to operate from my home.

It should be easy not to turn back to the window and watch over him. I  
tell myself there is no care; nothing grows in this infertile soil.  
But I’ve learned to prize what is most human. He is odd and moody and  
generous and too speculative, this aging hippie man who wears his  
solitude and unhappiness badly. He’s human, as good at being human as  
he is terrible at being human, and I’ve grown accustomed.

I turn, watch through curtains. Light rain again. Denim, frown,  
tomatoes in the rain.

Living sucks, and travel. Yet I come home.

Author's email: eliade@gmail.com


End file.
